By Dr Tafataona Mahoso

IN the September 5 instalment, I showed how the Freedom Charter of the African National Congress was relegated to the museum and how, through financialisation and financialism, negotiations in the 1990s for South Africa’s future were split between highly visible and explosive summits dealing with governance, on one hand, and low-key technical sessions dealing almost secretly with the economy on the other hand.
The result was that South Africa ended up with ‘good governance’ and ‘the greatest constitution on the African continent’, on one hand, and the most racialised and unequal economy on the other hand.
The Sunday Times of September 7 2014 reported aspects of this paradox.
One result of this financialisation of South African society is that the working population seem to be forever in mass demonstrations and strikes.
But there is another result: the prevalence and amplification of simulated democracy and simulated wealth sustained through the manipulation of stock markets and media spectacles.
In practice, the following strategies were adopted to hide the defeat of the African revolution in South Africa:
South Africa was redefined as a rainbow nation instead of an African country.
Nelson Mandela was rebranded away from the image of the radical communist martyr of the revolution and into a great African philanthropist and Nobel laureate.
The South African economy was redefined in terms of aggregate financials and not in terms of the well-being and living conditions of the majority of the people. For example, a big argument was foisted upon the people about whether South Africa or Nigeria was now the biggest economy on the African continent in terms of GDP and foreign direct investment with little reference to livelihoods.
South Africa was used as the most important African base for western-sponsored parties opposing revolution in Africa in general and Zimbabwe in particular.
Nelson Mandela and his wife Graca Machel were elevated as great philanthropists and moral icons (elders) on the African continent. They were lumped together with foreigners trying to help Africa overcome its alleged deficits in everything from democracy and the rule of law to running water and medicines. The other media-promoted philanthropists were Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Kofi Anan, Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, George Soros, Mo Ibrahim, Tony Blair, Theophilus Danjuma, Patrice Motsepe, Tokyo Sexwale and Aliko Dangote – – all focusing on Africa as the most deserving continent to receive charity as a substitute for economic revolution and empowerment.
Africans were reduced to counting billionaires, superstars, celebrities and donor projects as wealth.
A media-sustained moral economy (the chema economy) was installed and celebrated in the place of the lands, water, minerals, forests and plains of Africa. The Africa Report issue of February 2013 contained a long feature called, ‘The philanthrocrats: the foundations (that is, charities) pumping billions into Africa provoke tough questions about the business of charity’.
The combination of neo-liberal and postmodern ideas through the media made it easy for the forces of global oppression to stage powerful impressions of democratic change when in fact what we saw were simulations of democracy by groups and individuals who sang slogans of revolutionary change and social renewal when in fact they were fighting to entrench a global status quo, the so-called ‘new world order’ under which ordinary people were reduced to countingmillionaires, billionaires and donations as wealth and to worshiping paper constitutions as evidence of ‘democracy’, human rights and global ‘integration’.
After the terror and its resulting deprivations, the escape route promoted has always been a counterfeit.
Perhaps an analogy would be helpful here: these days it is possible to buy a programme which can turn one’s television set into an apparent fish tank.
The programme comes with instructions about how to keep the false water sparkling clear and cyberfish looking agile and fresh.
After a while owners of these false fish tanks forget that their fish are not real. A small mistake may lead to the death of the entire lot of cyberfish.
That is when the owners get really depressed, like mothers mourning the deaths of real children. Zimbabweans saw glimpses of this sort of behaviour at the CITES conference in Harare where so many yuppies from North wept because their motion had been defeated and they believed we were not capable of taking care of our own elephants and other wild animals.
So they wept and cried real tears for our elephants.
Most of them did not cry when Smith andBotha were murdering our people. But at least in the CITES case the elephants were real elephants, although it was difficult to see how a New York animal freakcould actually ensure the survival of elephants in Muzarabani better than people of Muzarabani themselves.
Now, how can the same people be relied on to tell us how to empower ourselves politically and economically?
At any rate, when the cyberfish die because the owner had forgotten a detail in the programme, the owner books a visit to his or her shrink (a white n’anga) to figure out on how to get over the depression and mourning for the cyberfish. And the European n’angas have a hard time convincing their cyberfish freaks that they had fallen in love with cyberfish.
Cyberfish is simulated fish, not real. Cyberfish is media fish, like democracy or GNP on the page of a newspaper which is too expensive for the people to buy and read.
Now, in real living history, the media have made many of us fall in love with cyberdemocracy or simulated democracy as well as simulated wealth.
This is the democracy and wealth of the seminar or workshops at a hotel in Harare or Johannesburg, democracy and statistical income at a retreat in Oxford or New York, to discuss Sierra Leone, Liberia, Rwanda or Somalia after the terror, the Ebola or some other regime change catastrophe.
This type of democracy is criticized effectively in The Captive Public by Benjamin Ginsberg; Demonstration Elections by Edward S Herman and Frank Brodhead; The Real Terror Network: Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda by Edward S Herman; and in Rich Media,Poor Democracy by Robert McChesney.
The propagandists of simulated democracy and statistical wealth today are pseudo-radicals, people who preach a highly privatised form of revolution which is intended to leave intact the fundamental structure of world oppression and local privilege today.
The introduction to The Africa Report feature in February 2013 showed the nexus linking financialisation, financialism and the chema economy of media-orchestrated charity events.
It said:“As world leaders gathered at the UN headquarters on New York’s First Avenue for the General Assembly, a similar star-studded meeting was underway a few blocks to the west and hosted by former US President Bill Clinton. “His foundation organised the three-day meeting known as the Clinton Global Initiative, and persuaded heads of state …to attend. Panellists discussed how science, microfinance and social media could consign poverty to history.”
In other words, in order to deter leaders of nations around the world from launching and leading revolutionary movements for economic change and social justice, the few billionaires benefiting from the financialisation of the world economy instead launched the myth that charity, microfinance and social media could and would end poverty without any mass movement or social revolution such as the one that happened in Zimbabwe between 2000 and 2006.
“Many sessions (at the Clinton gathering) were moderated by Bill Clinton himself, with Africa a subject of many a live-streamed discussion.
“Since its launch in 2009, the Clinton global initiative takes credit for improving the lives of more than 400 million people in 180 countries (who should not be allowed to think they can improve their lives on their own). “Its annual gatherings are marked by an infectious optimism inspiring the philanthrocrats and their employees to get down to making a difference (by deterring the povo from revolution).”
The launch of the Bill Clinton initiative in 2009 was a direct response to the so-called global financial tsunami of 2007 to-date whose consequences we see in Thailand, Greece, Turkey, Ireland, Egypt, Tunisia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and to a great extent, South Africa. People are mobilised in permanent strikes or demonstrations.
They cannot live on inflated stocks figures and GNP in counterfeit accounts resulting from the financialisationof their nations’ economies.